§ I.

The theologian knows perfectly that, according to St. Thomas, angels are corporeal with relation to God; that the soul receives its being in the body; and that man has a vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual soul; that the soul is all in all, and all in every part; that it is the efficient and formal cause of the body; that it is the greatest in nobleness of form; that the appetite is a passive power; that archangels are the medium between angels and principalities; that baptism regenerates of itself and by chance; that the catechism is not a sacrament, but sacramental; that certainty springs from the cause and subject; that concupiscence is the appetite of sensitive delectation; that conscience is an act and not a power.

The angel of the schools has written about four thousand fine pages in this style, and a shaven-crowned young man passes three years in filling his brain with this sublime knowledge; after which he receives the bonnet of a doctor of the Sorbonne, instead of going to Bedlam. If he is a man of quality, or the son of a rich man, or intriguing and fortunate, he becomes bishop, archbishop, cardinal, and pope.

If he is poor and without credit, he becomes the chaplain of one of these people; it is he who preaches for them, who reads St. Thomas and Scotus for them, who makes commandments for them, and who in a council decides for them.

The title of theologian is so great that the fathers of the Council of Trent give it to their cooks, “cuoco celeste, gran theologo.” Their science is the first of sciences, their condition the first of conditions, and themselves the first of men; such the empire of true doctrine; so much does reason govern mankind!

When a theologian has become — thanks to his arguments — either prince of the holy Roman Empire, archbishop of Toledo, or one of the seventy princes clothed in red, successors of the humble apostles, then the successors of ............